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Los Angeles to network all 7,500 miles of LED streetlights through wireless and cloud technologies

Los Angeles has more LED streetlights than any other U.S. city. Massive retrofits in recent years have created some 7,500 centerline miles of energy efficient lighting, keeping the streets brighter, safer and more pedestrian-friendly. But with this modernized network came a new question: how best to control and maintain the LEDs while monitoring their energy usage and reporting on the savings that the LEDs bring? Now, the city is set to install the Philips CityTouch system, which will allow L.A. to oversee this huge network of LED street lights remotely using mobile and cloud-based technologies.

We reported on Philips CityTouch recently, when the city of Szczecin, Poland, unveiled plans last month to replace half its streetlights with LEDs and utilize the CityTouch system. Buenos Aires has adopted the same technology, as have an additional 29 other countries around the globe. But what makes Los Angeles ground-breaking is not just the tremendous scale of their LED network, but the fact that the network comprised of bulbs from a variety of different manufacturers.

This necessitates the use of plug-and-play technology to connect all LED fixtures to the CityTouch network. As Philips explains in a statement, “Using mobile chip technology embedded into each fixture, the street lights are able to identify themselves and network instantly. This smart plug and play approach not only reduces the cost of programming each fixture, it also reduces the time of commissioning from days to minutes and eliminates on-site commissioning completely.”

And voila, a massive network of interconnected LEDs all reporting their data to one central program, so, as Ed Ebrahimian, director of the Bureau of Street Lighting for the City of Los Angeles, explained in a press release, the Bureau can have “a clear picture of the entire city’s lighting system at its fingertips, with map-based visualization, charts and diagrams. The combination of LED technology and management software will enable the Bureau to better manage its assets, while Angelinos benefit from the increased up time, with safer, well-lit streets.”

Though this, the Bureau of Street Lighting can not only have a more efficiently run system, but they can control the level of light at different times of day and also adjust lighting depending on the needs of the street or the neighborhood. Such systems are a boon for LED lighting, and pave the way for more efficient, customizable municipal networks—and with L.A.’s huge network adopting the technology, it is likely to serve as indicator to all of CityTouch’s viability and utility.